


Visions of an Empty Room

by Immanuel



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Astronomican, Gen, Great Crusade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28049034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immanuel/pseuds/Immanuel
Summary: All his life, Konrad Curze has been plagued by visions of the future. They have been both grimly literal and darkly symbolic, but they have never before been empty.
Kudos: 6





	Visions of an Empty Room

“I SEE NOTHING,” Curze whispered. Long fingernails clicked arrhythmically on the table. Thin lips pulled back from teeth filed to points, unkempt hair swaying in the ragged breath that hissed between them. Eyes as black and fathomless as the void stared unblinking at the crystal sphere before him.  
“The visions cannot be forced, my lord. Even the Crimson King’s orb-”  
“You’re not _listening_ , Fel.” Curze threw the orb at his Chief Librarian’s head. Fel Zharost sidestepped, letting it disappear into the darker shadows at the edge of the librarium. There was a resounding crack as it struck something a considerable distance away. “It’s not that I can’t sssssee. I see. Nothing.” The primarch’s fingers curled in the air before him, as if seeking to grasp the meaning of the empty visions that had plagued him for weeks. “Abandoned streets. Battlefields populated only by the dead. Hollow vaults darker than death. Empty halls and silent corridors.”  
The orb rolled back out of the darkness. Fel made to stop it with his boot.  
“No!” cried Curze, arm outstretched. A psychokinetic pulse sent Fel stumbling back a step. Curze dropped to all fours, scrambling alongside the rolling ball like a beast. He tilted his head this way and that, craning his neck to see all possible angles. When it came to a standstill, he rose, corners of his mouth pulling upwards in a manic grin.  
“What have you seen, lord?”  
“Just another empty room. But I knooooow this one,” he cooed. Alive with purpose, Curze began to make his way to the doorway. “I am going to Terra.”  
“What about the war?” Fel called out after him.  
Curze looked over his shoulder and blinked for the first time in over an hour. He looked left, then right, seeming to have forgotten that he was in charge of a fleet that was currently prosecuting a full-scale planetary invasion. He shrugged. “Tell Sevatar he’s in charge.”

It was hard to see in the Forbidden Fortress. Its black-walled halls were dimly lit, but that did not trouble Nostraman eyes. The whole place shone with another light. A blazing psychic radiance. The light of the Astronomican. Konrad Curze hated that light. He had been there once before, when the Emperor had shown him the edifice on which the Imperium was built. More than the Imperial Truth or the might of His inexhaustible armies, the Astronomican was what made the Imperium possible. It burned through his eyes and into his soul. Curze had meant never to return, but the future rarely respected his wishes.  
His eyes were closed, which helped only a little. The light was so close, suspended just a few hundred metres above the walkway from which he hung. Footsteps approached, eerily muffled despite the cavernous proportions of the chamber. Two sets. One armoured. The unarmoured one was small, probably a child. Curze swung himself onto the walkway, a giant in midnight plate coalescing from the shadows between bolts of psychic energy. The footsteps stopped. He opened his eyes.  
The girl cast an unusual shadow. It fell against the light of the Astronomican, pushing it back. The light flowed around her, like a boulder in a stream. A pariah. The aquila stamped on her forehead marked her as an aspirant of the Silent Sisterhood. Of the owner of the armoured steps, there was no sign.  
The Night Haunter loomed over the girl, close to three times her height, stormbolts crackling across his armour. “Hello.”  
The girl looked to her left, then back at him. She did not appear at all fazed. “You’re not supposed to be here.”  
“So they keep telling me.” There was blood on his clawed gauntlets.  
The girl looked to her left again. “You should listen.”  
One eye twitched, pulling his mouth into a snarl. That was when he saw the other shadow. It was of a different magnitude entirely, flooding the entire chamber with an oppressive darkness without diminishing the light. He strained to catch a glimpse of the source, the outline of the woman at the heart of it.  
“I didn’t see you there, Jenetia. That answers one question... and poses so many more.”  
She made a Thoughtmark gesture that was both rude and dismissive. It had no easy translation, but he had certainly killed people for far less. Curze did not wait for the girl to sanitise it.  
“I have seen you - well, the absence of you - in my dreams. Impossible, I thought. Yet here you are, just as I have foreseen. What do you suppose that means?”  
Krole scowled. Curze wondered if perhaps she was as concerned at the prospect as he was. _Not everything has meaning. Some things simply are._

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by some scenes in season 1 of Heroes where Isaac Mendez, who can paint the future, is looking for Peter Petrelli but keeps painting empty scenes because Peter’s invisible.


End file.
